Andrew Lincoln deserved an award for smiling in The Walking Dead

Benefits Street ended last night but I just couldn’t bring myself to sign on when you know the ‘stars’ will pop up on next year’s Celebrity Big Brother or, failing that, on Splash! as an injury sub.

I’d rather get my slice of gritty ‘reality’ – minus the Birmingham accent – on The Walking Dead (Fox).

Something strange happened as everyone’s favourite zombie drama returned from its midwinter coma. Sheriff Rick Grimes smiled. Come on, Walking fans, who can recall the last time that happened?

It’s a tribute to the way this hermetically sealed world has locked me in its embrace, that such a small detail becomes an event.

In this episode we had Grimes looking pretty much near zombie himself, following the pasting he took before the break. His own son turned on him with the line: ‘You’re nothing… I’d be fine if you were dead.’

That’s a bit rich, Carl, given all your dad’s done for you. Sulky teens, eh, what are you going to do? So after all that, Grimes remembering how to curl his lip on an upward trajectory was a major shock as an episode closer.

What went before included meaty chunks of dialogue-free drama, which is how The Walking Dead creates its feel of post-apocalyptic isolation.

In the middle, there was a bizarre dream sequence, which felt like I’d flipped channel into an episode of Scandal but mostly this was a father-and-son meltdown in which it looked – no they can’t, can they really? – like Grimes would be a goner.

It was hard to catch more than one word in three that he said, thanks to his swollen lips and looking like he’d been ten rounds with Mike Tyson but if this had been Pacino or Brando we’d have been hailing masterclass acting.

One day Lincoln will get the credit he deserves for his performance here but probably only when the last skull has been crunched. For now, that smile tells us he’s here for the duration.